Enhancing organizational effectiveness in developing countries: The training and visit system revisited

Improving the effectiveness of public sector organizations in developing countries has become a major focus for national governments and foreign aid agencies. This study reviews the experience of a major organizational reform strategy, the training and visit system of extension, that has operated for more than 20 years. Several lessons drawn from this experience are that aid donors must: (i) eschew their preference for organizational blueprints and recognize the contingent nature of reforms; (ii) recognize that many public sector organizations have only a small ‘controlled’ decision-making space and thus pay more attention to ‘influenceable’ decision-making opportunities; (iii) acknowledge that machine model approaches are likely to reinforce the negative aspects of hierarchical control in bureaucracies, and; (iv) pay much more attention to organizational sustainability in terms of finance and strategic management capacity.     

A small civil service in transition: the case of Estonia

Although scholars have shown consistent interest in small states in past decades, the Republic of Estonia has not been included in any study of small states owing to its brief history of independent statehood. This article provides an overview of the development of the Estonian civil service, to enable readers to understand the background and scope of reforms in the 1990s. The objective of the study is to test previous findings on small states using empirical research into the Estonian civil service. Interviews with civil servants reveal a few new characteristics attributable to the size of a state such as personalization of units and organizational objectives, and additional sources of organizational instability. However, it is argued that several problems of public administration in developing countries and small states overlap, which creates difficulties in distinguishing between developmental factors and the size of the state as determinants. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Civil service and democracy: Questions in reforming the civil service in eastern and central Europe

The debate over public service reform is taking place at a time of flux when old models are being challenged everywhere. This article discusses issues of institutional transfer, as between western and east and central Europe, relative to civil service reform and democratisation. It presents several models to describe the place of the civil service in the democratic state and the implications of each for civil service organisation. It argues for a better balance between a legal approach, which tends to dominate advice coming from some continental European countries, and one which emphasises ‘good’ rather than just ‘correct’ relations between administration and citizens. This distinction is fundamental in so far as, under the UK Citizens Charter for example, the citizen is seen as a ‘customer’ rather than a mere ‘user’ of services he has no influence over. The article concludes that, given the differences in culture, political climate and economic situation of ‘recipient’ countries in east and central Europe, each must search for its own reforms, looking for questions rather than answers.     

Cleaning up and invigorating the civil service

Reliable quantitative estimates are not available of: (1) the quality of civil service performance and changes therein as the result of development projects, or (2) the importance of civil service performance for various development outcomes. Nonetheless, anecdotal evidence indicates that in some countries government performance has indeed collapsed, with calamitous effects on development. Although poor government performance is theoretically overdetermined—there are many possible causes, which we cannot disentangle in practice—a plausible story can be told based on institutional economics, using such concepts as information, incentives, and credible commitment. This version of both problems and solutions is supported by examples of successful reforms. The article argues that “institutional adjustment’ deserves more consideration as a basis for reforms. Two practical examples are discussed in some detail: improving incentives in the public sector and strategies to combat corruption. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Voluntary environmental agreements in developing countries: the Colombian experience

Voluntary agreements (VAs) negotiated between environmental regulators and polluters are increasingly popular in developing countries. According to proponents, they can sidestep weak institutions and other pervasive barriers to conventional mandatory regulation in such countries. Yet little is known about the drivers of their use and their effectiveness in poor countries. The considerable literature on voluntary initiatives in industrialized countries, where both VAs and socioeconomic conditions differ, may not apply. Using a conceptual framework drawn from the economics literature, we examine four prominent VAs in Colombia, a global leader in the use of this policy. We find that the main motive for using VAs has been to build capacity needed for broader environmental regulatory reform and that partly as a result, VAs’ additional effect on environmental performance has been limited. These findings contrast with those from industrialized country studies, which typically conclude VAs are used as a low-cost substitute for impending mandatory regulation and have few benefits because of weak regulatory pressure. Our findings suggest that in developing countries, VAs may be best suited to capacity building, not environmental management per se.     

Destructive decision-making in developing countries

In most developing countries strategic decision-making has been largely based on false premises that have led to destructive results. One set of false premises stems from the assumption that development can be dissociated from the destructively exponential growth in developed countries, from the limits on the planet's physical resources and from complex ecological linkages. Another set is grounded on the popular myths of entrenched development economics: particularly, the enshrining of GNP as the overall indicator of progress, and the concomitant withdrawal of attention from poverty and concentrated wealth, unemployment, and the injurious effects of many modern technologies. These destructive premises tend to reinforce the evolving institutions of new-style empire and oligarchy.More successful development requires standing present development policies on their head through development goals calling for (1) a recognition of redistributive and nonmaterial growth possibilities, (2) redistributive, material and nonmaterial growth in developing countries, (3) redistributive, nonmaterial growth in overdeveloped countries, with a major slowing down of material consumption, (4) large-scale employment projects in developing countries, and (5) the fostering and use of more constructive technologies. All such shifts, however, would require—and tend to lead toward—substantial, long-term changes in the sociopolitical structure of developing countries and the world society.This paper is based on and adapted from The Limits of Development Administration, the keynote paper presented in October 1972 at the U.N. Public Administration Division's conference on development administration in Kiev, USSR, and Unemployment: The Snag in Development, prepared at Kiev and published in The Nation, Dec. 11, 1972.     

发展中国家的政府职能

发展中国家所面临的问题与西方发达国家不同 ,发展中国家没有建立制度化的政治秩序 ,迫在眉睫的是解决人民群众的基本生存问题 ,更没有建立起市场经济体制 ,也没有健全的法律制度。这些行政生态情况决定了发展中国家的政府职能要比西方发达国家的政府职能强。无论是经济 ,还是社会发展 ,政府主导都是发展中国家发展的必然之路。     

The public service ethos and the role of the British civil service

The last Conservative administration invested much time and effort in reforming the structure and organisation of the Civil Service. Yet it left untouched the core principles which underpinned Whitehall, often referred to as the public service ethos. In this article, we argue that this ethos has been defended by both conservative and liberal opinion as something fundamentally good. Yet, in reality, the public service ethos is a power/knowledge system which legitimises the rule of a particular elite by presenting public service as a worthy occupation and, thereby, authorising a system of power which is relatively closed and secretive. This accounts for why it has been in the interests of both the last Conservative administration and the present Labour government to ensure the ethos remains intact.     

Administrative reform in developing countries: A comparative perspective

This study investigates administrative reform in seven Arab states, delineates common problems and describes general tendencies via content analysis of official statements. The study deals with reform in three major phases: defining administrative problems and needs; developing strategies for reform; and developing instruments of action for implementation. Appraisal of reform efforts discloses mediocre results based on a poor implementation record attributable to incongruities of methods and objectives of reform. Among such incongruities are the conventional limitations of bureaucracy, the copying of Western administrative rationality in form if not in substance, and insufficient attention paid to traditional, cultural, religious, and political contexts of administration. Recognizing the difficulties involved in conceptualizing and implementing reform in any society, the analysis offers several recommendations to improve the outcome of reform efforts, among them: encouraging employee involvement in reform decisions; improving collected diagnostic data; providing special training for employees responsible for managing reform; soliciting unwavering political commitment; developing incentive systems; and replacing the piecemeal approach with reliance on a systems perspective.     

我国公务员制度改革的十大反思

公务员制度是我国政府的基本人事制度。随着社会的发展进步 ,我国现行的公务员制度逐渐显现出了其不足与缺陷。西方国家在新公共管理运动的影响下 ,纷纷对本国的人事制度进行了相应的改革 ,其主旨就是“用企业家精神来改造政府 ,用市场方式来管理公务人员”。具体措施如权力下放 ,解除规制 ,弹性管理 ,绩效评估等。作为一个有着自己特殊国情的发展中国家 ,我们在借鉴西方国家的经验时 ,必须从正反两方面来进行反思。     

公务员制度建设的思考

全球化时代的到来,不仅是我国公务员制度建设的机遇,更是挑战。我国公务员制度存在不完善的地方,要清醒认识到我国公务员制度可能存在缺陷,进一步明确我国公务员制度建设的基本原则,推进公务员制度创新,实现公务员制度的战略发展。     

Women in the Zambian civil service: A case of equal opportunities?

There is a paucity of empirical microlevel studies of women in the formal sector in developing countries. This article attempts to redress this deficit and focuses on the position of women in the Zambian civil service using information from a sample of personnel records. Although women are disproportionately represented in the civil service compared with other areas of the formal economy, the current positions of males and females are significantly different. However, the results of the survey are not easily encompassed in prevailing theoretical frameworks and, rather surprisingly, it appears that it is age rather than gender that is the crucial explanatory variable. Finally, a number of possible explanations are advanced to account for our findings.     

Mobilizing local resources in developing countries

Many developing countries are putting increased pressure on local governments to mobilize resources, especially to meet the recurrent costs of operating and maintaining locally sited capital projects. Local taxes, user charges and voluntary contributions are all possible mechanisms to carry out these efforts. Yet several important issues arise whenever these mobilization instruments are contemplated and evaluated. Several, often competing, objectives must be considered when evaluating fiscal instruments including the ability of the mechanism to raise revenues, its effect on economic efficiency, its equity implications and its administrative feasibility. After discussing each of these objectives, we show how numerous constraints, including those imposed by the political/legal system, administrative structure, the economy and the culture of the country, must be recognized while searching for a workable set of reforms that will mobilize additional resources without doing great harm to the other objectives. The key to these reforms would seem to be incentives or disincentives inherent in the revenue structure. Without recognizing these incentives or attempting to alter them, resource mobilization efforts are likely to go astray.     

Salient features of the 1988 civil service reforms in Nigeria

The main provisions of the 1988 civil service reform in Nigeria are discussed, including structural reorganization, professionalization and the enforcement of public accountability. As of the time of the reform, the following defects were associated with the civil service: undue importance accorded the generalists at the expense of the professionals; profligacy among public officers; nonchalant attitude among civil servants to their duties; and corruption. Measures taken to rectify these defects by the reform include: the adoption of a uniform structure for the civil service nationwide; the harmonization of power with responsibility; the streamlining of the span of control of officers to not more than eight units; the expansion of the powers of internal audit units complemented by an audit alarm system; the mandating of chief executives to submit progress reports on their ministry to the president; and the rationalization of promotion criteria for public officers. These provisions are little more than the rehashing of past legislations, which failed to achieve positive results, not because they were faulty in precept but because they were sacrificed to sloppy implementation. Therefore, the 1988 reform may suffer from the same fate because it was simply grafted onto the corrupt system that caused the failure of past reforms before it.     

Cost-utility assessment: Planning with local decisionmakers in developing countries

In the past decade countries and donor agencies have endorsed health policies which (1) give a very broad definition of health, (2) see the pursuit of health as part of the development process, and (3) emphasize the local community's and local decision-maker's participation in the planning of health projects. Despite these broad principles, health delivery systems in developing countries have access to a very limited set of resources. Health planners are faced with the dilemma of creating cost-effective programmes while recognizing the need to take into account the broad definition of health and the importance of local participation in planning. This dilemma has led to a division between those planners who put greater emphasis on the use of cost analysis techniques in which the decision-making process rests more with professional planners (often outside consultants) vs those who emphasize greater local control of the decision-making process. The purpose of this paper is to present a study in which two alternative approaches to cost utility analysis were used. Consideration was given both to the actual cost analysis strategy and to the integration of the cost variable into the total decision-making process. Finally, major emphasis was placed on including local decision-makers in the planning process and providing them with feasible and understandable decision-making tools.     

Elections and the structure of taxation in developing countries

This article analyses the impact of the electoral calendar on the composition of tax revenue (direct versus indirect taxes). It thus represents an extension of traditional political budget-cycle analyses assessing the impact of elections on overall revenue. We appeal to the opportunistic political budget model of Drazen and Eslava (2010) to predict the relationship between taxation structure and elections. Panel data from 56 developing countries over the 1980–2006 period reveals a clear pattern of electorally-related policy interventions. Taking the potential endogeneity of election timing into account, we find robust evidence of lower indirect taxes being applied by incumbent governments in the period just prior to an election. Indirect tax revenue in election years is estimated to be 0.3 GDP percentage points lower than in other years, corresponding to a fall of about 3.4% of the average figure in the sample countries, while there is no such relationship with direct tax revenue.     

Rent-seeking and institutional stability in developing countries

We are grateful to Mark Toma, Gordon Tullock, Stephen Drew Smith, Bob Collinge and participants of the rent seeking panel held at the 1990 meetings of the Southern Economic Association for their helpful comments. Remaining errors are our responsibility.     

Improving the organization and management of civil service training in Zambia

This paper describes the first phase (1981-1984) of a programme being carried out by the Government of Zambia to improve the organization and management of in-service training for civil servants. General guidelines for an effective training function are outlined. These are compared to the problems of civil service training in Zambia in 1981, where responsibility was fragmented, co-ordination was poor, work concentrated on routine administration, and the background of training staff was often inappropriate. A set of recommendations was agreed for resolving these problems, including the creation of a central training directorate and a cadre of full-time training staff. The package of proposals was designed to increase accountability, improve co-ordination, improve the quality of training staff, and introduce systematic training procedures. The progress with implementing these changes is evaluated; the greatest progress was in setting up the cadre of training staff, although significant progress was also made in other areas. The paper concludes that the conditions for an effective training function have been created and that a longer-term programme to develop the new training cadre is now required. The Zambian example provides a possible model for any country thinking of introducing similar changes.     

From myth to reality: Globalisation and public spending in OECD countries revisited

The prevailing but not unchallenged 'conventional wisdom' in the literature dealing with the impact of globalisation on public spending is that the effects of increased openness can be compensated through the welfare state. Repeatedly, studies have found little evidence for a 'race to the bottom' in taxation or spending. This research note shows that it is premature to conclude that globalisation has no negative impact on public spending. By extending the period of observation into the 2000s, by looking at changes in openness and spending instead of their levels, and by disentangling the effects of openness in the cross-sectional and over-time dimensions of variation, this article shows that the association between increased openness and spending is clearly negative. Although the contribution of this research note is mainly empirical, some theoretical arguments are presented, emphasising the long-term nature and complexity of policy making in the politics of globalisation.